In an age where information is so easily accessible and youth literally have it at their fingertips, it is hard to imagine how important health knowledge continues to elude some.
Last week, Rocky View Schools (RVS) revealed a disturbing statistic – the district has some of the highest sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates in the province and teen pregnancy in the jurisdiction has not declined as quickly as hoped.
While Alberta Health Services reports a decline in teen pregnancy between 2010 and 2012, there were about 6,000 pregnancies resulting in live births by teen mothers. About 15 per cent of these live births were repeat births.
The fact STI rates in the school division are high is not surprising considering Alberta as a whole has a major problem in that area.
Last year, Alberta Health reported that STIs – specifically syphilis and gonorrhea had reached “outbreak” levels. At the end of November, there were 360 cases of syphilis in Alberta and 3,396 cases of gonorrhea, the highest level seen since 1980, despite there being more information and education available – including a $250,000 awareness campaign undertaken by Alberta Health Services in June 2016.
At the time the information was released, Alberta Health pointed the finger at social media aiding in the increase of infection cases.
New social media tools enable people to communicate quickly to arrange anonymous sexual encounters, resulting in increased difficulty in tracking STIs. When people don’t know their sexual partners’ identities, it makes it difficult to contact partners for follow-up testing and treatment,” said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, chief medical officer of health.
While that can’t necessarily be attributed to higher rates of STIs in youth specifically, RVS is working with researchers to learn more about how social media affects young people’s relationships.
The way people date has changed since the advent of social media and smartphones. With those changes comes the need to retool how society teaches sexual and relationship health.
Intimacy or sexuality through a screen is much different than it is in person, as is the level of supervision.
While the debate continues to rage about how much of that role should be taken by the school and what level of responsibility belongs to parents, the evidence points to a failure by one or both parties in effectively educating youth about safe sex.
Rocky View Schools is on the right track in its “multi-pronged approach” to improving its delivery of sexual health programs and its commitment to better involve and inform parents is a vital component to that success.
In an age of free and easy-to-access information, a lack of education on sexual health is inexcusable.
